The new Microsoft Office for health provides cloud flexibility and compliance, IT control and real results

​Last week I blogged about how the new Microsoft Office streamlines care team collaboration and patient communication. Today in the final installment of my series on the new Office for health, I’ll be covering how it allows health organizations to move to the cloud on their terms, provides IT control, and most importantly is delivering real results for customers big and small.

Flexibility and compliance for the cloud

In our conversations with health organizations, it’s clear that they want to take advantage of the benefits the cloud offers, but they want to do it on their own terms. With the new Office, health organizations can move to the cloud at their own pace and in a way that addresses their needs around data security and compliance. It can be run on-premises, as a hosted service or as a hybrid of both.

Plus, Microsoft Office 365 is the only major cloud business productivity solution that addresses rigorous HIPAA regulations in the U.S. and offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to customers. For customers outside the U.S., we have similar standards in place. Check out the list of standards Office 365 is compliant with here. And read about how customers are taking advantage of the HIPAA privacy and security capabilities of Office 365 here.

Control

Since IT control is of extreme importance to our health customers, the new Office offers many capabilities to help them keep control and maintain compliance. The Office 365 certifications are clearly part of that. We also offer end-to-end solutions for device management, enterprise-grade Data Loss Prevention (DLP), built-in malware protection, Retention Policies, Information Rights Management (IRM), remote wipe and so much more.

You can see one example of the new Office security and privacy features in the demo: When our fictional nurse goes to send an email with potentially private health information, she gets an automatic warning that reminds her to make sure she’s complying with the organization’s policies around sharing sensitive data.